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Monday, 12 July 2010

Nick's Nasties get a boost from their master.

I didn't bother making any comment on Norman Clegg's 'La-la-la-we're listening honest-la-la-la' site and I'm very glad now I didn't bother. The hypocritical waster has proved himself to be as twisted with self-importance as any politician and is much use as an ashtray on a motorbike.

I've put up with shivering outside. I've put up with being barred from everywhere. I've put up with snide and spiteful rules such as 'smokers must not be allowed an outside shelter that actually functions as a shelter'. Dammit, if you kept a dog under those conditions you'd be arrested, but for smokers it's not only allowed, it's demanded by law.

One thing I really cannot stand is being patronised. Faced with smug superiority, I reach levels of rage that you couldn't coax out of me by any other means. It is now my mission in life to campaign at every election - not for anyone, but against every one of those parties that delights in kicking me around.

You want to know what your lovely smoking ban really means to us smokers, Clegg? While you and Foggy click your champagne glasses together, we smokers are being villified and harassed by the thugs and low-life and pompous, arrogant filth that the Labour party created, and which you now continue to pat on the head and send out like your own private Gestapo to bully a whole section of society. You don't just turn a blind eye to this, Clegg. You don't 'let it happen'. You are making it happen.

Phone lines so that these vile harridans of yours can 'shop a smoker'. Huge fines for anyone smoking on private premises whether anyone else objects or not. You have professional objectors now, Clegg. You have accepted them, taken responsibility for them and you will continue to encourage them.

A few days ago, I had to travel from my lab to the hospital to pick up a sample for analysis. Yes, this evil smoker has a cure for Clostridium difficile, Salmonella infections, enterotoxigenic E. coli and with a little modification it's likely to be the stuff that cuts down Campylobacter in poultry too. It shows promise in early tests against IBS.

I'm tempted to add a trace of nicotine to it - it won't make a scrap of difference to its effects but it will mean you bloody anti-smokers won't touch it. Nor will you buy poultry or pork made from animals that were treated with the stuff. You can keep buying the infected crap, you can keep shitting like a power-washer, we smokers will get the healthy meat and the healthy guts. Fine with me.

I travelled by bus, of course. There is a convenient bus stop outside the lab and if I get the right bus, I can get to the hospital without changing buses. The bus stop is on a dual carriageway. Cars zoom past there. Lorries rumble through. This area is not exactly covered with such roads, all others in this direction are little more than farm tracks. So it's busy.

Buses are non-smoking and so is the hospital. So I generally have a quick smoke at the bus stop because I won't get another one until I get back. Outside the bus stop, of course, because I can't smoke in there either.

Cars flash their lights at me. They sound their horns. They slow down and drivers lean over to glare at me. I am smoking, you see, and they believe that I am polluting the clean air of the dual carriageway, while their cars are not.

These vicious, spiteful, Righteous people are in cars. They are not going to use any bus stop, much less this one. It makes no difference at all to them if I were to go inside the shelter, seal up the entrances and smoke a massive cigar. Yet these people, Nick's Nasties, feel justified in harassing any smoker, anywhere, at any time. That is what this government is encouraging. Spite. Same as the last one.

To put it in context, here is the bus stop in question - photographed from the other side of the road on my way back to the lab.

What's that, antismokers? You think there might be a playground full of cheeeldren just out of the shot? Well, here's a wider view. The bus stop is the speck in the middle. It is illegal to smoke in there.

There is a farm straddling both sides of the road. There is a dual carriageway, used by heavy traffic, lorries, and of course buses, beside the bus stop. Just over the hill, behind the stop, is an airport. An airport.

And yet Nick's Nasties get enraged at a cigarette. Righteously enraged at a little tube of paper filled with leaves, smoked legally outside the stop, not in it, and nowhere near anyone or anything at all. All those traffic and aircraft fumes mean nothing to them compared to that little tube of paper filled with leaves.

I have a tax demand here for tax-in-advance. This year I will break with tradition and fill out my tax return early because I always overestimate how much tax I owe (deliberately, so it's a nice surprise when I see their figure is lower than mine). This year I am going to shave as much as possible off that tax bill. Not one penny overpaid this year, Clegg. Not one penny. Earnings will be just enough to survive on and tax from me will be the absolute minimum I can legitimately manage. I will not pay you more just so you can harass me more.

As for your equally smug pal, the Forehead of Unending Righteousness, he can fuck off too. I thought Tories were all about individual freedom and self-reliance but he's just a less ugly version of the Brown Gorgon and still has that 'I know best so shut up and do as I say' attitude.

This coagulation government has had enough time to prove that they'd be different to New Labour, the Tiny Blur and the Brown Gorgon. They have so far proved that they are almost exactly the same.

Frank Davis has a theory as to why that might be and I think he's right. There used to be a joke along the lines of 'It doesn't matter who you vote for, the government always gets in'. It's not a joke any more. It really doesn't matter who you vote for now.

Someone suggested 'flash-mobbing' pubs where we all turn up and light up at once. That won't work, they'll just fine the pubs. The government would love us to act as revenue generators for them and to help hasten the demise of the pub. We could club together and get one of these, inflate it, smoke in it, deflate it and vanish but it's seriously expensive. Think how much VAT we'd be handing over to Forehead and Nasty Nick, too.

Making things worse for pubs won't help. We want to be allowed back inside, not make them close faster. We have to fight these political monsters at the ballot box. That vote is the one and only thing we say that any of them pay the slightest attention to.

Here, then, is the first outline of my campaign plan for the forthcoming Holyrood elections. This will be refined, naturally. It's just a first draft.

Any campaigner coming to the door will first be asked what his party plans to do about the smoking ban. They will say 'Nothing, of course' or if they are really stupid, they will talk about their party's plans to make it worse. I'll let them talk. Then ask them whether they thought black people would vote BNP. Whether a shop steward would vote Tory. Whether a Jew would vote for Hitler.

Finally, ask them what makes them think that a smoker is going to vote for a party that regards smokers as utter filth, subhuman, and that encourages contempt and even violence towards those smokers.

I want to get the message out to all the local smokers that the party they have supported all their lives regards them as scum. Never mind all that talk about the faraway 'economy' which means little to these people. Here and now is what matters to them, their lives, their work, their leisure time, the closed pub that they had to stand outside until the weather became too cold to bear it and they all stayed home.

It's not Labour's fault any more. The alleged supporters of small businesses, the Tory half of the coagulation, are happy to watch the pub closures continue. They could have stopped the closures two months ago. Not only did they do nothing, they have made it clear that they intend to continue doing nothing, unless they come up with some new ways to make smokers suffer.

There will be posters for the Holyrood elections. Free publicity, politicos. You'll like that.

Below your faces will be words to the effect of 'Vote for me, you smoking scum, and I will make your life even worse'.

I'll extend it to drinking and food too.

No deals. No compromise. No discussion. None of those antismokers ever wanted any and it's too late now.

No-Enjoyment Nicky has shown his true colours, and like all the rest of them, his colours are the black and white of the Puritan. If you smoke and you vote Lib Dem, then dress up like a turkey and get in line for the Christmas referendum. The same goes for any smokers voting for any of the ban-supporting parties.

Vote for any party that will destroy the smoking ban, or don't vote at all.

Clegg won't listen. Cameron won't listen. When Moribund Senior takes the Brown Gorgon's seat, he won't listen either. Al the Oily Fish isn't going to help us. They all want our votes but they don't want us. It's time to let them know they can't have one without the other.

We'll hear cries of 'Oh but if you do that, the BNP might get in'. Tough. Let them get in. I no longer care who gets in as long as it is none of the current batch.

Smokers have nothing more to lose. There is nobody even listening to us. Nick's Nasties have free reign to treat us as less than dirt. Labour are the same. The Tories are the same. The SNP are the same. Get rid of them all and I really no longer care who replaces them. I don't care if it's the Church of the Militant Elvis as long as the ban goes.

So, smokers, close your ears to talk of deals and compromise. They are not to be trusted.

Remove this ban entirely. There is now no other demand we should make. To hell with 'providing ventilation'. To hell with 'smoker apartheid rooms'. To hell with 'oh, but it smells'. To hell with compromise.

We have seen no compromise even offered to us. We should offer none in return.

Update - via Dick Puddlecote, I see No-Fun-Nick is getting a smack. I doubt it will have any effect. The man is too revoltingly self-righteous to give a speck of spattered faeces about any of us. Including the dupes he conned into voting for his so-called party.

He is a New Nazi. The BNP are the least bad option now. Cry and scream all you like but it's true. Smokers have only BNP or UKIP to vote for. Twenty per cent of the population have nobody else. You want a BNP government? It's coming, and you will have made it happen, antismokers. That includes the liberally dim Clegg and the Forehead of Eternal Self-Importance. You leave us no other option.

For myself, only a total repeal will do. I am no longer interested in a compromise with those who have proven themselves to be lying weasels.

37 comments:

You mentioned working in a lab doing what I would consider important work.Therefore imagine several top level people that smoked working at GCHQ for example walking out and not returning until the smoking ban was repealed.

Fantasy I know...but basically its about people in positions of importance that could shatter this ban quite easily. We're far to apathetic.

I quite like the idea of "VOTE FOR ME YOU SMOKING SCUM!" by the next election I think society will be so divided that we could actually see a "smoker vote." Do some of these nationwide and it might get actually have an impact.

Your spoilt LI, you have a bus stop with sides AND a bit on the front. Luxury.My local bus stop is near to a derelict windmill and known locally as 'windy corner'.Its on a very busy road, it has no sides, no front and one huge no smoking sign.Its a farce, often I've stood there alone, freezing and wet, I've stood outside and lit up and watched the stares of hatred from passing 4x4's the size of a battleship with one person in them and now simply stare back.As any seasoned traveller knows, a bus will not appear until you light up. Sometimes I just hate this Country.

Anon 03:48, the 'no smoking' sign at your bus stop is unlawful, a shelter with a back panel and no sides is not 'substantially enclosed'.

With you on this one Leg-Iron, I did not vote Conservative at the election because of Camerons attitude that the smoking ban was a 'done deal'; that and the not an EU referendum thing. That is why he ended up not with victory but with Coalition.

My suggestion about flash-smoking was based on the assumption that there are no longer dedicated LA officers. They probably didn't work after 5pm anyway. Proper Police don't want to spend their time on this and Plastic Plod's bicycles wouldn't get them there in time. The only thing stopping civil disobedience is fear. Actually, for all I know in the local tucked away in Hell Estate they might all be lighting up anyway.

Giolla's suggestion has merit. Walk into buildings with a cigarette behind your ear. Sit at a restaurant table with a cigarette in front of you. My suggestion is the setting up of smoke extraction research rooms. I'm sure we could get companies to provide equipment at a discount. It would be genuine research and so difficult to stop and a real time video could be put on Youtube, with real time air pollution readings. Many of us would be prepared to invest in such a venture. It would succeed. Thousands watching a secret smoking room on Youtube, where the air was demonstrably clean. Direct action is now the only option.

The "Sham" thread both you and DP forwarded us to is now gone. It was a duplicate (the guy who set it up accidentally set up two, undoubtedly due to the glacial loading speeds of the site) and they have erased the one with the most votes and comments leaving the one people had been ignoring. Also, it does look like the original has been erased, rather than blocked.

fantastic post LegIron. I posted a comment over at DP's place about civil disobedience. How about it, who is coming and what about doing it in Clegg's constituency office?

When and where is all I want to know. If you need a co-ordinator - fuck it - I'll have a go. Whatever happens now we MUST take direct action to be heard and smoking in a place that could get the twerp Clegg fined might just get the message across to this self important knobhead.

Go on, Leggy! Do the nicotine thing in your new potion and then tell them all that “It probably isn’t suitable for non-smokers because their systems aren’t used to nicotine and might react badly. Unfortunately, it’s a necessary ingredient in the medication because (insert suitably scientific-sounding reason in your own words)” It’s about time that these puritan medicos and health-trust managers got a taste of (excuse the pun) their own medicine, and that equally puritan, but very sick, non-smokers were denied the treatment they needed for no other reason than because you don’t think they should be allowed it. Sauce for the goose, as they say!

1. What's to stop anybody registering a company offshore (in other words in a country that has no legal ties to GB at all), then paying for and hosting a website in said country?

2. What's to stop people from going over to France/Wherever and buying the absolute maximum amount of baccy/smokes that is allowable?

3. What's to stop those people advertising on site above (Step 1) saying they're willing to swap 5 (or however many packets of fags) for whatever goods they're after?

Like a swap shop where the currency is baccy or smokes? Where you detemine how many packs of fags you're willing to swap for a toaster, and where the other party is willing to swap that toaster for so many packs of fags?

That way you get around paying duties on the smokes and you get away with paying any income taxes since you're not actually making any income?

Or am I being naive and uneducated in the ways of how swapping things work in accounting terms.

Wow, I'm an avid reader of your blog. This is a brilliant post. I'm not a smoker (not out of pious reasons - just never bothered), but I will definitely "fake it" & join you if (sorry, when) your plan comes together.This really is going to be big. I earnestly encourage you LI in this.I am genuinely with you.

Yep, I set up the SHAM entry, and duplicated it. The link to the original leads you to the duplicate - its title has been given a "-1" on the end, but they have redirected the original address. There were loads of posts on the original and they've simply been dleted but Please, please, go back and repeat the posts. They mustn't win.

Interestingly I didn't put the quotes round the word consultation in either copy, so they've been fiddling. I am of course incandescent about this.the link is nowhttp://yourfreedom.hmg.gov.uk/repealing-unnecessary-laws/this-consultation-is-a-sham-give-us-free-speech-1George Speller